Restaurants, typically of the take-out variety, such as those involved mostly with sandwich and salad preparations, have developed methods of storing ingredients required to prepare sandwiches and salads to an individual order. Special tray arrangements contain the precut ingredients, typically in large quantities, readily available for use. Similarly, many supermarkets have point-of-sales storage and display arrangements for volume sales of such precut ingredients. A storage system for sandwich and salad ingredients in the home would be highly desirable. The home situation differs from that in a restaurant or supermarket. For example, in a restaurant or supermarket, volume sales may require frequent replenishment of ingredients, and food and health laws may deter storage of ingredients from one day to the next. In the home, such ingredients are need only at certain times, and the consumer may want to retain ingredients for longer periods.
The home environment is one area in which it is desirable to provide suitable sandwich and salad ingredient storage. For instance, collecting individual sandwich and salad ingredients from various parts of the refrigerator requires leaving the refrigerator door open for an extended time while searching for the multiple items. It would thus be desirable to provide a single storage unit for containing the needed ingredients so that such a storage unit containing multiple items can be withdrawn from the refrigerator at a single time. A home storage system for a plurality of items, such as sandwich or salad ingredients, may desirably be compartmentalized to hold smaller quantities, maintain freshness and meet the storage requirements of different ingredients. In particular, it would be desirable to have a flexible system that can accommodate multiple containers of various sizes. A compartmentalized storage system should be easily stored in a home refrigerator, be space-efficient, and have other desirable features as described below.